This offseason, as teams are scrambling to get that extra edge on the rest of the leauge, one of the best players possibly to be on the trade market will be Pat Burrell. Any team would be greatly improved with a guy like Burrell batting in the 2 or 3 spot. People can argue he has enough power to be batting either third or fourth, but his high obp would create more runs from the top of the order, adding wins to his team's year.

Many people have overlooked Burrell for most of his career, shunning him from arguments of most valuable hitters in the game. In my eyes, Pat Burrell could be the most underappreciated player in the whole sport. He gets on base at one of the most successful rates in baseball, and he brings quite a bit of pop to the plate.

 Over the last four years, you can see a steady rise, or at least no fall off in his stats. He has posted OBP's in these years of .365, .389, .388, and .408. His Slg. pct is consistently around the .500 mark, with at least a .500 slg pct over the past 3 years. You can count on him to consistently hit 25-30 home runs, with hiw lowest since his rookie year being 21 in that dismal year of 2003, which he has since proven as a fluke.

Sabermetrics seem to really like this guy as well. His Marginal Lineup Value Ranking, which is a stat devised to measure how many runs a player generates over an average league player, was .222 in 2005 and .176 in 2006. That means he brings in around .2 more runs a game than the average player, which adds up to a lot over the year. His EQA has also been over .300 for the third straight year, putting him in the upper echelon of major league hitters.

He is definitly progressing every year, and his peak seasons seem to be ahead of him. The only down side to his play is his fielding, with his Range Factor in the outfield being 1.52. This isn't half the Range Factor of Major League leading Curtis Granderson, who has a 3.18 RF. This being the case, I believe he would be better fit in the American league at dh, where his poor fielding wont be a problem. Any team will without a doubt win more games with him in the lineup then just any other 25- homer potential guy. He would get a vote from me if i was asked to pick the 5 most underrated players in baseball